Chicago, Once A Bikeshare Innovator, Squeamish About The Next Level

A reporter test rides a LimeBike in Washington, DC September 20, 2017. The bikes can be rented via an app that finds the closest bikeshare via GPS. More dockless bike systems are expected in US cities this year from California-based startups...

Chicago had a new mayor and a progressive new transportation director, both fresh from D.C., in 2012 when it decided to launch Divvy, its city-owned bikeshare system. Since then the Divvy system has seen more than 10 million rides on 5,800 bikes tied to 580 stations connected by 100 miles of bike lanes. But the bike sharing concept has evolved even faster, making Chicago's heavy bikes and anchored docks seem old-fangled.

Only five years later, the state of the art calls for free-floating, dockless bikes tracked by GPS and managed by smart phone. Chicago's not so sure.

"We have not yet seen the results of a successful dockless launch in a city that’s like Chicago, in a city’s that’s as big as Chicago, a city that’s as dense as Chicago, where there was already an existing dock-based system," said Amanda Woodall, who helps oversee the Divvy system for the Chicago Department of Transportation. "Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, it’s just that we haven’t seen it yet."

Chicago has a lot of questions, Woodall said: where would thousands of public bikes park? how well would they serve underprivileged neighborhoods? how would they be managed and maintained?

"If one company or one system behaves in a way that is not up to par with the permitting process or the business-license process, what will that look like?" Woodall asked at a recent panel hosted by Chicago's Shared-Use Mobility Center.

"I’m not making that up," she said, "that has happened in some cities in the U.S. where some very ambitious folks have said, 'Let’s just go into this town and drop a lot of bikes on the ground and charge people X dollars per ride and they can do it all on their smart phone, and we don’t have to worry about maintaining the bikes because we’ll make all our money by the time the bike breaks down.' There are some folks in the world who take that path, and we would be very concerned if someone decided to come into town without getting a proper business license."

Chicago worries, as do other cities, that bikeshare companies will behave like Uber did, entering markets first, disrupting established businesses, answering questions later. But Anthony Desnick, who manages government partnerships for the bikeshare startup Spin, pointed out that any company can take Uber's tack if it wants to, suggesting that cities should be proactive in setting up partnerships with responsible companies.

Yesterday, LimeBike announced it had raised $50 million to expand its dockless system into more cities. So dockless bikeshare appears to be on its way. LimeBike, like Spin, is open to cooperating with local governments, said Will Colegrove of Ekistic Ventures, a venture capital firm that specializes in solving urban problems and advises LimeBike.

"The idea is to work with governments," Colegrove said. "Our philosophy at Ekistic is that governments should set ground rules that should be followed by all entrants to a market, rather than trying to pick a single winner or a monopolistic player. Set ground rules, work with companies to make sure everyone’s in compliance and then allow competition which we think is better for consumers in a market."

How will Divvy fare in competition with dockless stations? Divvy General Manager Elliott Greenberger floated the idea of adding locking and unlocking technology to individual Divvy bikes so they, too, can be used without docks. That suggestion seems to acknowledge the dockless advantage.

"Everyone knows the frustration of being dockblocked," Colegrove said. "You ride where you want to go, maybe you spend 25 minutes of a 30-minute ride, and the station is full. So that’s a very frustrating experience. We think it can turn a lot of people off from bike share, especially if it’s one of their first times using it, and we believe the dockless system can provide a lot more flexibility."

In LimeBike's system, people locate the free-floating bikes using a smart phone app. "People can simply locate them on their phones on a map and unlock, pay $1 for a 30-minute ride. No annual membership required. At the end of the day the bikes go where people take them, and we think that’s the most equitable way to roll out a bike-share system, is to go where the demand takes it."

"Even in a dense city like Chicago," he said, "Divvy doesn’t reach everybody, and I think there’s a place for another kind of bike-share system that would serve the people who don’t currently have access to Divvy."

"I like to think of our bikeshare as the bikeshare for everyone else."

That appealed to Woodall, because Chicago has struggled to bring Divvy stations to underprivileged neighborhoods, and even once installed, to encourage ridership there.

"When we talk about dockless systems coming into Chicago, of course it immediately pulls on our efforts to increase biking in the city," she said. "But we have more questions at this time than we have a firm stand on what it might look like."